


like a forest around a castle

by buries



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Missing Scene, Season/Series 05, spacekru
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-23
Updated: 2018-09-23
Packaged: 2019-07-15 23:09:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16073312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buries/pseuds/buries
Summary: i'm afraid of being left behind.or the one with the defining moments between bellamy and raven during that first year on the ring.





	like a forest around a castle

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kingwellsjaha](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kingwellsjaha/gifts).



> this was written for @kingwellsjaha for the braven exchange fic. the prompt i chose was:
> 
> _An intimacy_  
>  had grown between us  
> like a forest around a castle.  
> \- Louise Glück, excerpt of The Sword in the Stone
> 
> this is set between the season four finale and season five's premiere, with a focus on the first year in space. no spoilers for season 5! this is definitely an au on season 5. c: i hope you like this! your prompts were amazing, but i had a particular fondness for this one. ♥
> 
> unbeta'd, so all mistakes are mine. title comes from the prompt shared above.

Raven wishes to be loud, to hear the clang of her braced foot’s heavy falls against the Ring’s flat surface. She wants her fingers to transform into blades so they sing out of key against the metal walls. No one wants to listen, refusing to press their ears against the walls as they shield them with their hands instead. It’s the sounds they’re all becoming afraid of, as though the words, their own voices, will become too much for all of them within the span of seven days.

She doesn’t really know what everyone’s hiccups are, but she has a feeling everyone’s doing what she’s doing – searching for the voices they’ll never hear, not for a good five years.

It’s easy to find Bellamy when everyone becomes quiet. His ears remain uncovered by his hands. It’s almost like he wants to listen to the raucous. 

He stands by his window – their window, she supposes – as always. His arms are crossed and his hair’s a wild nest. He’s staring out at the globe again, all red and hot and devoid of any patches of green. 

She doesn’t soften her footsteps, allowing him to hear and react if he wishes to. He doesn’t.

Standing beside him, Raven purposefully leaves a sliver of distance between them. They’re always shoulder-to-shoulder, but never elbow-against-elbow. Folding her arms against her chest, she looks down at the world before them.

She much prefers looking at Bellamy from the corner of her eye.

“So,” she says softly, allowing only her voice to remain as quiet as the Ring. “Everyone’s in some collective brooding fit. Am I the only one not invited?”

She spies the corner of Bellamy’s lips curve upward. “Yep,” he finally says. “You’re the only one not invited.”

She pouts. “Unfair.” His smile only grows wider. Pride blossoms warmly, familiarly, within her chest.

Bellamy exhales deeply, the still air finally gaining some static, some _life_ , within this corridor. 

“Have you put your name on this window?” Raven spies the knotting of his brow. For once she cares to elaborate. “No one ever comes here but you.”

“No,” he says, sounding amused. “But maybe I should. It’s a decent view.”

“It will be,” she says quietly. She immediately dislikes how her voice sounds so solemn when she had wished to be like a firecracker, popping warmly and uncontrollably loud within the corridor. She had hoped it’d invigorate the team – _Spacekru_ , as Echo dubbed them – so that their adventures up here in the Ring would be something to write home about.

Something to take back down to Earth, to the bunker beneath the ground’s floor. To that girl, who loved her brother’s stories so much she embodied them in order to survive.

It’s only been a week, but Raven knows she can’t go without hearing a story of Heracles or Hera or a girl named Ariadne. On good authority she believes Bellamy can’t go a day without recalling them affectionately.

Finally, Bellamy looks at her. “You think so?”

Looking up at him, she tilts her head up and declares, “I know so.”

His smile is bigger, even if his lips remain pressed over his teeth. His face brightens up regardless of how tentative his smile appears. “Because you’re Raven Reyes,” he says, almost proudly. Butterflies, bright, blinding red ones that glow even hours after she’s laid her eyes on them, flutter in her chest, warming her like the kindle of fire. “You know best.”

She shrugs, feigning sheepishness. “Well …” She laughs, looking out the window again. Quietly, she admits, “I try. Someone’s got to have the answers. Maybe A.L.I.E.’s left me something to help save the end of the world.”

He merely hums in response, clearly not convinced the artificial intelligence that had once declared there were simply too many people would ever have a contingency plan in place to ensure they live.

Raven knows she did. Becca and A.L.I.E. were one in the same. She’d felt their love of people, their love for one another.

_Wanheda_ had commanded death so they could live. _Pramheda_ had sacrificed her own life for the chance of life continuing on.

Clarke’s nowhere close to having the same legacy as A.L.I.E.’s creator, but sometimes Raven can appreciate good symbolism. There is life after sacrifice, and she’s determined to see the seed take root and nourish.

Once they get back to that damn ground. 

She stands with him until Monty chirpily calls them for algae.

*

It starts to get real boring real quick.

Every meal is the same. The seating arrangements around the table (dubbed their “dining slab”) never change. It’s Murphy and Emori, Monty and Harper, Echo alone, and her and Bellamy. She notes how Echo and Bellamy never quite sit opposite or beside one another. 

It’s fine. She prefers sitting beside him. Sometimes his mere presence keeps her from trying to dismantle Murphy’s face.

“You’re just breaking shit so you can fix it,” Murphy says one evening, derisively rolling his eyes. The algae sit untouched by them all. “You’re going to shoot us into outer space just so you can save us.” Shaking his head, he delivers dryly, “Can’t wait.”

Raven grips her metal fork, imagining gouging his eyes out with it. Putting them back in would be a hell of a mission – and one she considers for only a second. Tinkering with the Ring’s wires and doors doesn’t mean she’s _bored_. She’s just trying to fix shit before it breaks. It’s called taking initiative.

She thinks to go into a ranting tirade at John Murphy, then realises it’s simply not worth it. He’s attacking her because he’s bored. She’s been sniping at him because it’s the only sliver of normalcy she knows besides standing by a window with Bellamy.

It’s fun firing bullets at Murphy. Sometimes she wonders which one will permanently wound him.

“You volunteering?” Bellamy asks, lips curved upward. Raven takes it as a chance to remember to breathe, and so she does, lowering her fork. When she looks up at him, she finds he’s watching her, face warm with amusement – and looking less burdened, if only for a sliver of a moment.

Murphy leans back in his chair and shrugs. “Why the fuck not? I’m bored.”

Emori punches him hard in the shoulder. “You’re an asshole, John.”

Before he raises his hand to rub at his arm, Murphy turns to her, leaning far away from her without so much as rising from his seat. He looks wounded. It’s a pathetic, endearing expression. He whines, “What did I do now?”

Raven smirks. “Yeah, _John._ What have you done now?”

“Guys,” Monty says firmly. Gesturing with his fork to the algae in their metal cups, he says forcefully, “Algae.”

Murphy shakes his head. “No fucking way am I eating slime.”

Monty’s eyes harden. Calmly, he counters, “You can starve, then.”

Murphy glares at him. Bellamy dips his fork into the algae and tentatively touches it to his tongue. His wince and recoil sets them all into laughing fits.

*

Raven remembers when a month would roll over into the next at the pace of a snail crawling along a stone. It’d drag on and on like the days spent on the ground under Grounder fire. She had wondered what they’d carry up into space, if it’d be the rare laughter she vaguely recalls from when they first landed on the ground. Instead, it’s the way time sluggishly passes them.

It seems to quicken in its steps when Murphy falls into an algae-riddled coma.

She finds Bellamy at his window, arms crossed tightly, as if trying to collapse his chest and thus himself.

When she approaches, she rests her hand against his arm. He startles, but seems to calm when he realises it’s her. It’s always her.

“Hey,” she says gently. “We’ll get through this.”

Bellamy doesn’t reply. He remains still beneath her hand, warm despite his cool disposition. He’s been running too hot lately, taking the burden of Murphy’s unknown fate and placing it on his own shoulders. Sometimes Raven thinks he picks her broken leg and piles it on, making it heavier and heavier so he’ll eventually crumble beneath his supposed sins.

Even if she tries to reach for it now, she can’t even begin to dismantle this intricate wiring.

“Murphy’s a cockroach,” she says with quiet fondness. “If anyone can pull out of a coma, it’s him.”

“What if he can’t?” he asks, voice soft and breaking. “Cockroaches do die, Raven.”

Her fingers wrap around his shoulder more firmly. “This one isn’t a regular cockroach, Bellamy. You know this. _I_ know this.”

He shifts on the spot, but doesn’t throw her hand from his arm. Encouraged, she squeezes him, standing closer than she usually does. “It could’ve been anyone,” she says. Raven looks down at the earth, at the red, angry patches where it seems to be bleeding. “It could’ve been you. It could’ve been me.”

“We’d be fucked if it was you,” he says, looking down at her. Where she’s used to seeing humour, a little spark in his eye, all she sees is fear. He looks older, more worn down and tired. Sometimes she thinks it’d be best if they used their time in the Ring to sleep. 

“And we’d be fucked it if was you,” she says. “Which isn’t to say we’re not fucked now. Murphy has a role here, whether we want to acknowledge it or not. He’s great for morale.”

Bellamy’s lips curve ever so slightly. “I never thought I’d ever hear you say something nice about Murphy.”

She looks up at him, shrugging. “Me neither. He’s an asshole, and I hate him. Sometimes I hate him more than I hate anyone else …” With good reason. Bellamy knows that. Emori’s beginning to with her prying. Forgiveness is a kindness she has granted herself, and one she has extended to John Murphy. Forgetting is a completely different story. “But he’s still worth saving.”

Bellamy nods, looking down. She wonders if he’s going to cry.

Looking out at the world again, Raven opts to give him space, despite her hand remaining on his arm. “Everyone is. We couldn’t save Clarke, but we can save Murphy. I think that’s worth something.”

“Yeah,” he says quietly. “I like Emori.”

She smiles. “You know she’s been shadowing me?”

Bellamy looks at her, shaking his head.

“She’s interested in what I do. It’s pretty cool to have someone be so openly into what I’m into. It reminds me of how I was with Sinclair …” It’s her turn to look down at the window’s bottom frame, inhaling to steel herself against another missing piece. He should be here, working with her on rewiring the Ring, on prepping them all for their inevitable return to the ground.

His hand rests on top of hers, squeezing around her fingers. “He’d be pretty proud of you, Raven.”

Despite her best efforts to blink back the tears, her vision blurs. She keeps her head ducked as she cries. “I’d hope so,” she says quietly. “He wouldn’t give up on Murphy. So I can’t.”

She feels Bellamy shift beneath her hand, shrugging her off somehow. Before she can look up and see if he’s leaving her, she feels his arm around her shoulders. She buries her face into his shirt.

“You really need to wash this.”

He laughs.

*

Retreating to Bellamy’s side becomes commonplace. After they eat Monty’s newly cooked batch of algae – a tentative mission on his side, since Murphy still remains in a coma – she ends up shadowing his footsteps back to his room. His is a little more comfortable than hers, with a nice small window set high against the wall.

She fiddles with the knickknacks he’s collected since being on the Ring. Old books with bent corners, a thick and dusty jumper, a jewellery box, a pen and discoloured notebook, and the radio he’s asked her to try and work her magic on. 

She neglects the radio. There’s time for her to peel back its layers and rebuild it.

He lies on his bed, an arm behind his head as his other hand holds a thin paperback. Easily, she knows he’s not really reading. She doesn’t need to turn around to know his eyes are on her back, watching her as though he doesn’t trust her not to drop something on purpose.

It was one time, and it was an ugly ass mug she wanted to drop on purpose. Who knew Bellamy Blake was so sentimental about crap?

“You really like ugly things,” she says. Tossing a mangled scarf into his chest of drawers, Raven slams it shut and leans against it. Despite its rough exterior, where it’s beaten and bruised and discoloured, it still stands tall. Strong, like her. “Is it because you’re so beautiful you can’t be around other beautiful things?”

It’s as though he’s been waiting for this. Bellamy perks up, book laid out against his chest open on the page he’s apparently reading. His other arm bends behind his head as he rests against both hands, a familiar, old smile of smugness brightening his face. He looks arrogant and young, like he did back when he threw her radio into a river.

Still a moron, even though, since then, he’s become less of an arrogant dick and more of an infallible friend.

“What can I say?” he says, shrugging. “I’m pretty.”

“My word was _beautiful_ , idiot.” She tries to bite back her smile. “Do you ever listen?”

His brows rise. “What?”

Raven shakes her head. She spins on her feet, opens the drawer, and plucks the scarf out to throw at him. It lands on his chest, almost disturbing his book. His fingers automatically go to it, fiddling with the fraying and broken threads. Whoever knitted it must’ve used the book she’s kept in her room. It helps her fall asleep.

“Why do you collect all of this shit?” she asks seriously.

He shrugs. “Something to do, I guess,” he says. “I didn’t have a lot on the Ark. And when Octavia came along …” Her heart plummets when she hears the way he says her name, filled with hope and dread all at once. It’s the most beautiful and saddest thing she’s heard. “I didn’t really have anything of my own.”

“Making up for lost time?”

“Guess so.”

She nods. “I get it.” When he lifts his brow in question, she pulls her shoulders in, trying to make herself appear like a smaller bird than what she is. “I didn’t have much … My mom used to give me everything I wanted, and then she turned to the drink, so … Finn used to give me stuff.” She leans against the drawers, half turned away from him. “It was nice, but it wasn’t the same.” 

“I get it,” he says. She looks up at him to find he’s pulled himself to sit against the edge of his bed, long legs bent over the side with his bare feet pressed against the ground. Even on the longest bed in the Ring, he still looks like a giant. Goliath. “I think I do. Octavia used to love it when I gave her things … until she realised they were given to me for _me_ first.”

“It must’ve been super tough,” Raven says. She watches him hang his head, hiding his face from her. Perhaps one day he’ll learn he can never do that – she always knows what he looks like, in rain or shine, in the present and the past. “I don’t even know how to begin thinking about being a sibling. It was always one of those faraway dreams. But for you, it got to be your reality. Kind of cool.”

“Yeah,” he says. She knows he’s smiling. “Kind of daunting, too.”

Raven moves to sit beside him, a little closer than she had originally intended. She doesn’t move from where she sits, hip against his, bad leg against his good one. “She’ll be okay,” she says quietly. “She’s Octavia freaking Blake. She’s half you. I’m pretty sure she’s the only person down there who could frighten _Praimfaiya_ into backing off.”

He laughs quietly. “ _Skairipa_ ,” he says, accent a little sloppy.

“Sometimes I think you’re the dumb one,” she says. He looks at her, brow raised, still smiling. “No,” she says, shaking her head. “You _are_ the dumb one. How did Octavia get all the brains?”

Bellamy leans back and picks up his pillow, smacking her in the face with it. “Not all of us can be smartasses like you.”

Laughing, Raven dramatically falls back onto the bed. She clutches the pillow against her chest as though it’s one of Harper’s bears. “None of you could be!”

*

When Murphy comes to, Emori slaps him. Then Harper, then Raven. It’s like one of those conga lines Monty showed them on an old cassette tape. Everyone lined up, put their hands on each other’s hips, and danced their way over to Murphy to give him a good strike against the face.

In their defense, Raven knows it had been from a place of love. It’s how she had to explain it to a bewildered Echo.

“Fuck,” Murphy rubs his cheek. It’s only been two days since the conga line, but every time any of them come to visit him, he puts his hand on his cheek and pretends it still hurts. Raven had barely used any of her power. He’d have half a face if she did. “It still stings like a bitch.”

She rolls her eyes, sitting down against his bed and roughly pulling his hand back from his face. “You’re such a tool.”

“And you hit like your hand is made out of one,” he says. He reaches with his other hand to rub at his cheek, crossing it over his chest. She pulls that one back, too, pinning his hands against the bed. “You’re super strong for a brainiac.”

His strength is minimal, but Raven refuses to acknowledge it. The coma had weakened Murphy, but his spirit remains as stubborn and untarnished as ever. If it wasn’t for the purple beneath his eyes and the slick sheen of sweat on his skin, she’d think he was faking it all.

She shrugs. “I’ve had time to work out.”

“With Echo?” Murphy’s lips curve upward before his eyebrows waggle. “Or Bellamy?”

Raven presses down against his arms, hands now on his wrists. Placing pressure against his pulse point, she waits until he winces.

It only takes a second.

“Fuck!” Murphy snatches his arms away, rubbing at his sore wrists. “Damn. Can radiation give me super powers, too?”

“Now you’re making me wish you were still in a coma.”

Murphy barely reacts. “Everyone’s going to wish I was still in a coma sooner or later.”

Raven rolls her eyes. “Why can’t you let me be angry with you for almost dying? Why do you always have to be such an asshole?”

He shrugs. “It’s in my nature. Since when do cockroaches care about whether someone’s getting what they want? I never have.”

Crossing her arms against her chest, Raven looks around the metallic room. It’s the designated medic bay … without a doctor. Sterile, plain, boring … It’s enough of a punishment for Murphy almost dying. It pleases her.

When he opens his mouth again, she’s displeased.

“So, Bellamy.”

She turns to look at him, brow arched in a sharp challenge. “I’m Raven.”

“Ha, ha,” he answers dryly. Pulling himself up against the pillow, he eyes her, despite looking so drowsy he might collapse into sleep anytime soon. “You doing something about it?”

Raven barely blinks. “What?”

“You know,” he says, looking at her pointedly. Within seconds he becomes impatient. “You’re such a dumbass. I don’t know why I’m wasting my breath even trying to talk to you right now. It’s like you purposefully walk around with your eyes closed.”

She arches her brow. “Are you trying to lecture me, _John_?”

“If you weren’t such an idiot, Ra _ven_ ,” he counters. “Look, if being in an algae-induced coma taught me anything, it’s not to waste time. Time feels like it’s slowed down up here. It’s like we’re outside of the scope of shit that’s befallen us for years. But it’s not. This is the Ark – just a round fucking circle that has nothing interesting to do in it. We don’t have time. The oxygen could run out at any moment –”

“It won’t because I fixed that.”

He rolls his eyes. “Sometimes you can’t fix everything, Raven. Seriously. Sometimes you have to let things run its course.”

“Emori’s really mad at you, huh?”

He scoffs. “Yeah,” he says, a little softer. Looking to the side, he uncharacteristically refuses to meet her gaze. “She hates me for almost dying, not that I could help being in a coma.”

“She cares about you,” she says softly, smiling. She doesn’t try to search for his gaze. Sometimes a cockroach needs some privacy, and sometimes a raven is willing to give it. “She’s cool. Cooler than what you deserve.”

His lips curve upward slightly. “I know.”

“If we need to sacrifice anyone on this Ring, it’s going to be you.”

He shakes his head, lips forming a full smile. “I know.”

“You’re suck a dick.”

“I know.” Murphy looks at her. “You’re dumb. You don’t need to echo me and say you know.”

*

Murphy’s words are like a hand wrapped around her shoulder, applying nonstop pressure. The fingertips dig into her muscle and bone until she’s uncomfortable enough to begin squirming.

Raven Reyes doesn’t squirm.

Instead, she unfurls her wings and takes flight in the opposite direction of Bellamy. She lingers at the window on the opposite side of the ship, standing at the glass panel with her arms folded and the hallway empty of any noise. She refuses to look at him during their dinner – an algae special every night, if anyone can believe it – and digs into it so she has an excuse to leave.

Murphy’s knowing smirk is sharp enough to make her want to rip his spine out. Asking Echo to teach her how to kill a man without getting her hands too bloody is purposefully meant for Murphy – a declaration she ensures reverberates off the walls of the Ring.

She should’ve expected those reverberations to make their way to him.

Bellamy corners her in her room by simply standing at the door. He looms like a broad shouldered protective shadow. She doesn’t need to look up at him to know he’s gazing upon her with a tired expression.

He’s been chasing her while she’s been hobbling in her plight to flee him. Somehow, he hasn’t been able to catch her. 

“You’ve been avoiding me,” he says quietly. When she looks at him, his gaze is downcast. The mop of hair on his head works as an effective shield, one she doesn’t know if she likes right now. “Is it something that I did?”

“No,” she answers quietly.

“Something that I said?” He looks up, expression open and pleading.

Guilt curdles in her gut. “No,” she says, shaking her head.

Bellamy takes that as his invitation to step inside. He kneels before her, but doesn’t reach out to touch her. “Then why have you been avoiding me?” 

“I haven’t been _avoiding_ you,” she says, curving her lips upward. Her smile lacks its usual shine. “I’ve been busy.”

“Avoiding me.”

Raven opens her mouth, but she closes it when he shakes his head, gaze downcast and defeated once more.

“You said you were in this with me,” he says to the ground. Despite her efforts to seek out the slope of his nose, all he gives her is the curve of his ear – and barely that. The mop of hair works wonders for shielding him from her beak. “I can’t do this shit again, Raven. Either you tell me what’s going on with you or …”

If it’s meant to build itself into an explosive threat, it dies before it has a chance to spark. Bellamy merely shakes his head. Glancing up at her, he rises, looming over her like an unthreatening shadow.

“I’m always here for you.”

The room feels colder when he leaves.

*

Contrary to what Monty says, she knows how much time has passed since they blasted into space and she saved their asses – again.

Eight months has begun to feel like eight years. Each day drags with its repetitive nature. Each minute feels strict with tension whenever she finds herself in a room with just Bellamy. 

Just Bellamy. When did she begin to orbit around everyone but him?

Despite Murphy’s attempts to interfere, she’s outmanoeuvred and outsmarted him and Emori with every plan they’ve sat together and banged their heads to come up with. She’d easily predicted they’d try and lock them in a closet together, and the outcome had been hilarious when she’d told Bellamy.

But it’d only reminded her of the distance she’s responsible for. He lingers, just as she shadows him. Never does she allow them to come into contact. His window remains visited by only himself, and his room becomes a place she yearns to venture inside and press her fingers against every crook and cranny she can. But she hasn’t allowed herself the pleasure of discovery.

*

She’s had enough of her own shit.

By the eleventh month, Raven decides she’s going to outmanoeuvre herself. It’s not that difficult. She knows herself best. Her wings want to remain furled against her sides, her feet pressed hard against the ground. Her bad leg becomes heavier with each movement as she proceeds to push herself along a familiar route she’s travelled many times before.

She stops in front of his door. Where she’d raised her fist to introduce her presence, only to lower her arm and walk away, she reaches for the doorknob instead. Turns it. Opens the door.

He’s on his bed, actually reading one of his disfigured books. Immediately she senses he knows it’s her. For a moment she looks at him, wondering if he’ll lift his head and banish her from his doorway.

He doesn’t.

Tentatively, she closes the door. She lingers for a mere moment – a split second of an opportunity for him to turn her away yet again – before she approaches. She notes how his eyes no longer travel across the page. He stares at the book, as if to give her the gift of privacy.

Standing by his bed, she reaches down to take his book gently from his hands. He allows her. Holding it to her chest, she lifts her good leg onto the bed, using it to manoeuvre herself onto it and beside him. He shifts ever so slightly, giving her the space she needs to lift her bum leg up and onto the bed.

Lying beside him is like peering up at the stars. His bed isn’t as itchy or damp as the grass of the ground had been, nor is his ceiling as majestic as the night. But she finds herself mesmerised nonetheless.

His book remains open and pressed flat against her chest, right above her heart. Perhaps the pages can conceal the beating of it, as her heartbeat threatens to rival that of the furious flapping of wings.

When she feels as though she can will herself to move, she turns, resting her head on his shoulder. She lies on his arm, uncaring if it’s uncomfortable for him.

“I was avoiding you,” she says softly.

Quietly, he says, “You’re pretty good at it.” His words rumble beneath her ear. “Stubborn.”

“I’m so afraid …” She lets out a breath, pressing her fingers hard against the book still in her hands. It remains pressed against them, his side and her chest. “A.L.I.E. took everything that was good away from me, and I … Sometimes I think she’s still there. Inside me.”

She feels Bellamy’s arm shift beneath her, fingers dancing along her shoulder. 

“I’ve never felt so much hate for the people in my life. She had so much of it for the world.” She stretches out her good leg, feeling it bump against her ruined one. “And I had so much of it for you.”

“It’s okay,” he says patiently. “I told you I forgive you.”

“I know,” she says quietly. “But I’m so scared of losing you again.”

Peering up at him, she sees his brows furrow. His freckles stand out like the stars in the night sky against his features. The slope of his nose seems to have a thicker cluster of them than anywhere else on his face. “You’ve never lost me, Raven,” he says, confusion evident in his voice. 

“I could. You could’ve eaten that algae.”

“That could’ve been you, too.”

“I don’t know if I can save you from my idiocy,” she says. Sighing, she presses her lips together, looking up at his ceiling as she continues, “I’ve been a massive idiot.”

“Raven Reyes,” he comments with amusement. “An idiot?”

Releasing his book, she hits him gently against his chest. His laugh is a warm rumble beneath her ear. 

“I’m being serious. Can you just be serious for a second?”

He nods.

“I get that you feel like you left Clarke on the ground. So do I. I feel so responsible for her not being here with us.” She watches as he looks away, hiding his face as he turns against his pillow. Raven feels the desire to reach out and gently guide it back to her.

She knows he’ll return to her. There’s never been any doubt in her mind, nor any desire to pull him to her when he hasn’t been ready.

“I’m afraid of being left behind.” That draws him back to her with a tilt of his head. His brows furrow. “I’m afraid of you leaving me behind.”

“I’d never leave you behind, Raven,” he says, frowning. “We’re in this together. Every single minute of every single day, for as long as we’re together. It’s you and me.”

She smiles, lifting her hand to press her palm against her cheek. Despite trying to literally erase it from her face, the smile and the warmth spreading through her remains. “I need you to be with me on this,” she says. Her words feel jumbled and unpractised. “Regardless of what happens.”

Lifting herself up to rest against her elbow, Raven looms over him. Bellamy doesn’t move. The furrow to his brow’s gone. 

“Regardless,” he says. She searches his face for confusion, peering down at the constellations of freckles to seek it out. There’s nothing to lead her astray from the path she follows, using the stars on his skin to navigate. 

This must be what it feels like to be chosen first. To be the only pick. A long time ago, Bellamy had been her first choice to play second best, a part that had never suited him but he felt content to play nonetheless.

Back then she didn’t deserve him. In the present, she thinks she finally does.

She doesn’t know if he leans up or if she lowers herself down, but kissing him is like how it’s always been – an explosion.

“You’re such a dumbass,” he mumbles against her lips.

She pulls away, looking down at him with a frown. “Says you, dumbass who has _no_ certifications in _anything_ besides dumbassery.”

He smiles. “That’s bullshit.”

“So’s your PHD.”

“You’re always picking on me.” He shakes his head. His hand rests on her hip, fingers dancing against her pantleg before they slip beneath her shirt. His hands are warm, sparking against her skin.

“Always,” she says. She lowers her face to his, counting a few of his freckles. “Always, dumbass.”

Bellamy reaches for her, fingers threading in her hair. He pulls her back down, mouth pressed hard against hers.


End file.
